As the components required to build a computer system have reduced in size, new categories of computer systems have emerged. One of the new categories of computer systems is the “palmtop” computer system. A palmtop computer system is a computer that is small enough to be held in the hand of a user and can be “palm-sized.” Such computer systems are implemented as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and are finding their way into other hand-held devices such as cellular telephones.
While these palm sized computers (“palmtop” computers) have dramatically reduced size when compared to a desktop or notebook computer, the user would like to be able to perform many of the same types of functions performed using physically larger and more powerful computers. More recent implementations of such devices often have the ability of browsing the Internet using a wireless (or wired) connection. Unfortunately, the physical size of the device and it's associated display can seriously inhibit the user's browsing experience.
Most web pages are designed to display information in a format suitable for desktop and notebook computers with display resolutions of, for example, 600×800 pixels. When such pages are displayed on a much smaller display (e.g., a 160×160 pixel display), it is very difficult to effectively view the pages.
This issue has heretofore been addressed in two ways. The first is to use horizontal and vertical scrolling of a window over the original web page as illustrated in FIG. 1. In this implementation, the user scrolls a window 50 corresponding to the screen size of the hand-held device vertically and horizontally to reveal various portions of the web page. While this permits the user to access the entire web page, it is cumbersome to use and often provides an unsatisfying browsing experience.
The second mechanism used to address the problem is by using a proxy server to convert the web page to a format that can be viewed more comfortably by the hand-held device using a process called “transcoding” to translate the web page code to a more suitable format for the hand-held device. Unfortunately, using a proxy server has several disadvantages. The proxy server must generally be hosted and managed. If the proxy server is hosted by a carrier, then the browser will not be able to access intranet web pages behind a corporate firewall. Secure web pages would no longer be secure, since the proxy server must decrypt the web page prior to transcoding. If the proxy server is hosted within an enterprise, is must be internally managed within the enterprise (e.g., by the corporate Information Technology department). Also, the use of a proxy server can slow access to web pages under many circumstances.